The lost United

HEAD swathed in bandages, Bobby Charlton is lying in a hospital bed.

A man sits beside him reading a newspaper. He’s come to tell him that the plane crash in which he was injured claimed 22 lives, including eight of his Manchester United team-mates, the legendary Busby Babes.

The scene is unfolding in front of cameras in the former Durham County Hospital, temporarily transformed into a German hospital for the film United, the story of the 1958 Munich air disaster.

The crash killed 22 of the 44 passengers, including coaching staff, supporters, journalists and embassy workers, as well as the Busby Babes, who had won a place in the record books as the youngest-ever side to win, in 1957, the Football League.

A nurse in stiff white hat and crisply-ironed uniform tends to the patient. Outside, snow is falling, just as it was on the night of the air disaster. This is proving the snowiest December for years, yet the previous day no snow fell when the makers of the £2m BBC drama filmed a recreation of the crash. They had to use a snow machine to add authenticity to the sequence.

Today, only a glimpse out of the window of a Cross Country train passing through Durham Station spoils the Fifties atmosphere.

Jack O’Connell, young star of C4 teen drama Skins, spends most of the day flat on his back with his eyes closed, as the scene where he recovers consciousness is shot. Dougray Scott paces the corridors between takes, preparing to be Matt Busby in front of the cameras. Former Doctor Who David Tennant, who plays coach Jimmy Murphy, is not on call today.

A £150,000 investment from Northern Film and Media’s (NFM) Finance for Business North-East Creative Content Fund has brought the World Productions feature-length drama to the region. The film was shot almost entirely in the North-East, home of Bobby Charlton, the youngest Babe, who was born into a mining family in Ashington, Northumberland, one of the locations for the TV drama.

Based at Swan Hunter shipyard – fast becoming a favourite location for film-makers – the production was filmed all over Tyneside and Wearside. “The story has the North of England at its heart and we were keen to film here,”

says producer Julia Stannard.

“The locations around here have been spoton.

We’ve filmed interiors at Swan Hunter and built a scale replica of the plane. We’ve found the back-to-back houses, alleyways, working men’s club and streets we’ve needed. The area is less developed in parts than the North-West and lends itself to a period shoot.”

Manchester may have been the obvious choice, but financial input from NFM helped focus the film-makers’ attention on the North- East. “We knew it’s an area we could make work for the film,” says Stannard.

The snowy conditions brought inevitable problems, but only one scene was abandoned through bad weather – an outdoor football training sequence, which was rescheduled later in the South.

“The North-East has provided everything and more that we wanted,” says director James Strong. “We sent scouts to Manchester, Ireland and Wales, but funnily enough, the best place for the mix of locations we needed was realised in the North-East.”

He’d previously filmed the BBC series Rocket Man with Robson Green in the region so had experience of working in the area.

Strong began developing United seven years ago after working on a BBC drama-documentary about the air crash. He interviewed survivors and researched the subject himself.

Chris Chibnall, whom he knew through directing Doctor Who and Torchwood, wrote the script.

“It’s such a big story, but the way we’ve taken it, it’s a very human story. We’ve told this massive story through the eyes of two people – Bobby Charlton and Jimmy Murphy, and made it as much of a character piece as anything,”

says Strong.

“It’s not a disaster story, it’s the story of people and a family. We thought that was the way to tell this huge story.”

Strong wanted to make a film that would appeal to a mass audience. “We decided to have very little football in our film. Football is relevant but, in a way, that doesn’t matter – it’s the people, not the football, that count. The story doesn’t take place on the pitch, which is where it differs from previous football films.

‘AS best we could, everything in the script came from the words of real people, books that had been written, or through me talking to the people involved.

“It’s a very emotional story. We’ve tried to be true to the time and not give it a very modern, emotional overload which we sometimes have these days. People were much more restrained in their emotions and we wanted to reflect that.”

Because Bobby Charlton is still very much part of Manchester United, the film-makers felt it important to approach the club and inform them about the project. “But we never wanted to be endorsed by Manchester United.

It’s a very different beast to what it was back then. The club answered questions, opened up the museum for us and gave us a tour, but they haven’t actually had any involvement.

“Bobby Charlton is the only survivor still directly involved in the club. We wrote to him personally and he wrote back a very nice letter saying he loved the project, but didn’t feel he wanted to get involved.

“There is an incredible responsibility to get it right and not tell the story in the wrong way.

It’s about Jimmy Murphy and Matt Busby who created this amazing team, and then it’s about the young men, their hopes and dreams and what’s left after the plane crash.”

* United is scheduled for screening on BBC2 later this year.